Taxing Apple just taxes you

“This week the U.S. Senate brought Apple executives before one of its publicly held sub-committee hearings,” Mark Reschke writes for T-GAAP. “The topic was Apple using Ireland and other techniques to avoid paying U.S. taxes on products and services sold off-shore.”

“Among all the Congressional hubris that took place, one big fallacy remains: Corporations do not pay taxes, we do,” Reschke writes. “For every dollar or tens of dollars taxed and regulated onto companies, whether it be Apple, Coke or Bob’s Deli, we pay those costs.”

Reschke writes, “In reality, companies pay zero taxes, as they simply pass those costs down the line to the consumers of their products. Thus, we pay every dime of every regulation and tax bestowed onto corporations, every – single – dime.”

Well, as an independent small-business owner, I might disagree with that a bit. It might be true of larger corporate entities that have stockholders and boards of directors, but for those businesses where the owner comes in in the morning and opens the door, and works right along side with his employees, it is not so easy to just pass along costs of any sort, taxes included.

Lets just end all taxes. After all, when we tax your paycheck, we are just raising the cost of your labor. When we tax your consumption, you just demand higher wages to compensate.
When we tax nothing, we can just leap right to abolishing all police, fire departments and roads. Then lets go right to ending public education. After all, taxes pay for teachers and schools.
And those teachers don’t pay taxes on that income. Or on their purchases. Or their houses, which makes jobs, which employees people.. Wait… It’s a circle of life! D’oh!

So every restaurant owner selling food to public employees isn’t making money? Their wages magically don’t exist because taxes pay them? How about soldiers? We can just eliminate all taxes and stop paying trillions for an army. Which will end all those defense department jobs, that taxes are paying for. Which will kill millions of small businesses that serve those employees of those defense contractors. Can yo do the math?

Taxes aren’t any different than fees or charges we pay for anything else. Just because its paid to a government body doesn’t make it good or bad. We pay for our defense. I’ve never once in 39 years heard a conservative bitch about paying $2 million for a single goddamn missile. But tell him that $2 million is being spent to educate his kids and he demands teachers work for free and get off the public dole!

The hypocrisy is astounding. For 8 years, there was no tea party screaming about us spending $9B a month in Iraq alone. Did that money just magically appear somehow?

Taxes are just usage fees. We use everything from the goddamn roads to emergency services to 911. A company pays taxes to support these things, and its not somehow magically paid by everyone else anymore than you demand higher pay just to account for having to eat and pay rent.

Right…another asinine statement by botvinnik. What is going on under the current administration is little different than actions taken under previous administrations, Republican and Democrat alike.

When Bush cut taxes using borrowed money, that was stimulus. And he did it several times. So cut the bullshit “messiah” talk and contribute something worthwhile. If you cannot manage to do so, then don’t bother posting anything at all.

No one is always wrong, botvinnik. That is exactly the type of asinine, extremist statement that undermines any shred of credibility that you might hope to have on this forum. The sad part is that you are too clueless to be embarrassed.

I’m going to type this one more time for you Melvin, because I know you have such a difficult time with comprehension: “THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE POLICIES OF OBAMA MESSIAH, DUBYA, BILLY BOY or CIA GEORGE.” ya got it now?

There are differences in their policies, botvinnik…very important differences. You desire to mash it all together into some amorphous blob so that you can blame the ‘government’ is sad. You are on neurotic road headed towards paranoiaville.

Had a top level member of white house “Scooter” convicted of interfering with investigation of the release of secret agent name to the press.

Pardon “Scooter” before he actually went to jail.

Changed the criteria for the Iraq war once WMD were never found.

Allowed Osama to escape after Bush partially pulled out of Afghanistan to go to Iraq.

Families of soldiers had to raise money through bake sells to buy equipment to send to their families fighting in Iraq.

Never allowed caskets of dead soldiers arriving to be televised as did his father.

Used the national guard to fight the Iraq war because as Rumsfeld said, they’re cheaper.

Left the US economy in a wreck after leaving office with high and rasing unemployment, failing banks that required a massive bailout before he left and took another massive bailout after he left office.

Right, says the man who’s head is buried so deep that it will take a week for him to see daylight.

Afghanistan, nice try, Obama came into power in 2009, the generals ran the war, Bush started the war, Bush pulled out resources from Afghanistan to go to Iraq, the US put forces back into Afghan when fighting increased due to US pulling out of Afghan, but it’s Obama’s fault.

The Afghan and Iraq war were not on the books (fed budget) at about a trillion dollars at that time, nor was the $50 billion US auto loan bailout and the $700 billion dollar bank bailout under Bush. When Obama came into office in 2009 he passed a $800 billion dollar stimulus to keep the US from into a depression as well as giving additional bail out to the US auto ind not to mention increasing benefits for all those millions that lost their jobs during the Bush era.

That’s the free enterprise, capitalist market for you. They first move manufacturing jobs overseas, followed by white collar jobs where the only jobs left are those were you have to be behind something, behind a desk, a counter, a register, a shovel, a stove etc. After this the US companies fight against having workers get minimal wage, benefits or safety nets. The capitalist system at work.

Poverty in the US today has increased. A new president inherits everything from the old. You just cant’s start the clock over from zero. The US economy under Bush went from 5% to almost 8% unemployment and rising in less the a year. The banks collapsed and many people lost their homes. With all this economic catastrophe the US had to provided for it’s citizens.

The difference between a dem and rep is that a dem can make a mistake and admit to it and attempt to corrected. A rep never makes mistakes, therefore there is nothing to correct. You worry about the trade deficit but the the US deficit under Bush.

Of the 858 U.S. deaths since Obama’s inauguration, 791 have been combat-related. This means that for the 1,241 combat-related deaths that occurred since the Afghanistan war began in October 2001, about 64 percent happened in the two years since Obama took office.

Last year was the deadliest for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, with 497 combat and non-combat fatalities. Improvised explosive devices (IEDs), or homemade bombs, continue to be the number one killer of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

US auto industry going bankrupt (indirectly caused by bad economy under Bush)- inherited by Obama – today US industry is alive and well.

Massive deficits that climb every year – inherited by Obama – now deficits are reducing despite counter actions by republicans.

US had AAA credit rating – inherited by Obama – US lost AAA rating under Obama only after the republican congress failed to raise the US dedt ceiling as they had done for Bush at least 6 times, about the same amount of time as for Reagan.

“well, then Thomas Jefferson and JFK were republicans by your analysis of my views.”

Your views are what people like Rush, Beck and like plant in your head to make you hate and do their bidding as in voting for republicans that are actually taking away your rights all the while screaming that the dems are doing so.

Bjr, I know you had difficulty in middle school civics class, but who is the Commander-In-Chief of American military forces anywhere in the world? Furthermore, how do reconcile the increase of military combat deaths in Afghanistan since Obama Messiah was elected Commander-In-Chief with your incredibly ignorant statement, “the US put forces back into Afghan when fighting increased due to US pulling out of Afghan, but it’s Obama’s fault.”? You need to stay at the shallow end of the pool with the other eighth grade girls: Melvin and Jay Jay. Remember…no splashing!

Civics, please; you were a sleep in civics class, even today. You forgot to blame Obama for the Ft Hood shooting. Never mind the State Dept, Pentagon DOD or even the base commander at Ft Hood. It was all Obama’s fault just because he is the president, yea.

You’ve only proven through your lack of rebuttal, use of crude language and personal attacks that, well that’s all you have to offer. You are the typical reader here at MDN as your high positive ratings for your comments show. Most probable the reason why MDN first implemented such a system in the first place. You and your brethren have found a new home at MDN.

kingmel, don’t bother with botvinnik and crew. They have no interest in dialog, only in mindlessly parroting talking points. I’m still trying to figure out whether theyWhen even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition.’re knee deep in willful ignorance or whether it’s just simple intellectual dishonesty. Either way, there’s nothing to gain from trying to engage them. Mark Twain said, “”

It is a conundrum. On the one hand, I feel compelled to speak out against the type of BS that botvinnik and Fwhatever and the rest spout. On the other hand, you are correct that they have no interest in true dialog. They post to hear themselves speak, then revel in any response as justification that their thoughts are worthy of attention.

It is not in my nature to sit back and accept their BS. But it is not productive to feed the polititrolls, either.

I know what you mean. Every so often I feel compelled to respond, too, even though I know it’s wasting the bits and bandwidth. It’s curious and a pity that no amount of data or logic will ever convince them that their extreme positions are based on emotion and distortions rather than facts.

I’d like to see them struggle through the simple formulas:
1+∞ < ∞+1
and
∞×∞ = ∞

Gas was high before the clamors of getting more taxes from the oil companies. They say they haven’t been gouging us and it’s all supply and demand. If that were the case, their profits would have remained steady or gone up a modest amount each year. Instead, they make record profits that just keep increasing. No, that’s not gouging.

There is currently a grapph out there on the Internet that shows the proportion of taxes paid by all parties. Certainly with a little research one can verify this from multiple sources. It shows that over the years we have been taxing labor more and more, and taxing corporations and investments less and less.
This is precisely why the middle class is shrinking and our society is increasing polarized.
Without a prosperous middle-class economy itself withers. The middle class is the backbone upon which the rich get their handouts and the poor get theirs.
The USA is sliding towards a third world country of have and have nots. It is bad for democracy, and unfair and immoral.

Bullshit we pay every tax. Corporate law 101. A corporation is treated more or less like a person. That corporation pays taxes, not us. It pays taxes, generally, only on its profits and it’s called corporate tax. It’s comes after all of your other costs are deducted.

It’s very hard for many companies to know how much tax they’re going to have to pay at the end of the year unless you’ve been in business for a while and have good data to go off of.

That said, it’s hard to know how much to roll into the price of your products. Markets bad for the year? Then your corporate taxes will be low and expenses high… Expenses ended up being much lower in the latter half of the year… corporate taxes higher… You can imagine making assumptions for the year and slightly inflating your prices. But the more profit you make, the higher your taxes will be. That’s a huge problem.

But even if you do have solid ideas of what you’re going to pay on your corporate profits, nobody gives a shit because the market doesn’t care. It’s called competitive pricing. Less and less margins. Therefore, there’s no rule or formula that enables you to roll corporate income tax into your product. All it’ll do is increase the cost of your product and depending on your market, it might kill you off or increase the amount of tax you have to pay.

That’s why you price your products based on direct and indirect costs. You try to put out the absolute cheapest retail price you can and achieve the highest margins to get the most profit.

Again, corporate income tax comes off after all other expenses (direct and indirect costs). It’s not part of the costs of your product and literally impossible to say it’s a direct/indirect expense of doing business.

Corporate income tax is simply the government coming in after you’ve paid all of your expenses and sold all of your product and saying, “Ok, time to give us some. Pay up.”

This guy oversimplifies this, but like so many Internet idiots and hack journalists, it’s just another day on this fucking planet.

I am amazed how many people don’t understand that individuals are taxed on income/revenue and corporations are taxed on profits. A 35% individual tax rate is way higher than a 35% corporate tax rate. Imagine how great it would be to get a paycheck with no taxes taken out, pay all your bills and expenses and then pay taxes on what’s leftover. This is what corporations do.

Corporations can pay less in taxes by finding more expenses. If they invest more in R&D, factories, employees, etc… they lower their profit and tax payments but their investments will pay off long term. With low corporate taxes most corporations will not invest in their company. Instead they will pay the low tax and claim a higher profit. This makes the executives look good and they just give themselves higher bonuses. This is what is happening today with all these “record” profits.

Profits are kinda of a misnomer. If your CEO is making a $50 million salary, employees over $100 k each, and you’ve got a ton of money rolled up into R&D, then your taxable income is low (high expenses) but people do well.

I think the nature of profit and how people look at it has changed. Why give the government money when you can spread it around a company in a way where more people benefit NOW but you ensure a bright future for the business?

Of course what Apple has done is kinda shot themselves in the foot because it’s a bitch to repatriate your money and value. I knew this in the end would be the problem and I’ve been reluctant of using tax havens.

Corporations pay taxes I can assure you. No, there is no guarantee a corporation will ever be able to pass on its corporate income tax to consumers. You can have a good year profit wise, pay a ton of corporate income tax, and then the next year tank and go bankrupt. This shit happens all the time.

But anyway, suck up whatever junk the Internet spits out for the day.

We truly live in the most glib of times.

“Never in our history have so many understood to little about so much”.

Welcome to the information age. A bunch of Internet drones and armchair critics.

He gave us so many:
• “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.”
• “Facts are stupid things.” (at the 1988 Republican National Convention)
• “Well, I learned a lot….I went down to (Latin America) to find out from them and their views. You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries”

But Mark Twain can be best:The radical invents views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.